Career Transitions – Networking Knowhow

Welcome to The Networker’s Mentor

This is my blog, published each Friday to give you a fresh and in-depth look at the world of work and how you can expand and strengthen the connections you make throughout your career journey—from launch to legacy. I also write a free, straightforward, short daily networking advice email, Networking Know-How, which provides ”how to” strategies and tips to build and support your professional and personal connections. Networking Know-How is available as a daily (Monday-Friday) email or a Friday bundling of the week’s tips.

As a guide and coach to hundreds of professionals, executives, and high potential people as they move their careers forward, I have learned that reaching work-life success is really a matter of two things: knowing how to be helpful to the people we work with, and knowing how and when to ask for help. I am “paying it forward” by passing these lessons on to all who wish to “click.”

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I work a lot with people at all levels who are in professional transitions and what I often hear these days is not only: ”I want a job where I can make a difference,” but “I want work to be fun.” Well what does fun actually mean to you?

Careers have many stages and each offers opportunities and challenges to building fun into the routines and rewards of work. (Right off, let’s be clear: I’m not talking about being the “class clown” or even finding the humor in life–although having a healthy dose of laughter and humor in life goes a long way to reducing stress and increasing joy.) This blog is to help readers identify and define the key elements that will make work life a productive and positive journey.

For me, in my coaching role, fun isworking with highly self-motivated people, who are ready to do the homework and due diligence required to take on a new role or make a job/career change. Fun is alsobeing seen as a value-added resource whose support and guidance (and friendship) can help someone move forward. It’s being a sole practitioner (by choice) who can be working with people half-way around the world or four towns over. It’s a 7:30am scheduled coaching call, a coffee/lunch/visit to a museum with a friend during a weekday and receiving an early evening (and yes, an occasional Sunday night) text, “Do you have 5 minutes to talk?” Fun is understanding that although my daily planner is still blank for September, I get to decide how to fill it. Fun is being prepared for 60-hour work weeks and expecting the unexpected. Fun isstretching myself professionally–because for me work gives me unlimited opportunities to learn, yet never master a skill; to try something new, yet not lose my core strengths or interests. For example, right now I’m taking classes on how to use social media more effectively and writing/growing the daily Networking Know-How tips and weekly career blog–both taking me way out of my comfort zone, yet giving me a great sense of achievement in voicing my opinion on the web, and producing 20 dailies and 4 blogs a month (if my 8th grade English teacher could only see me now!).